Gold Coast Titans

Guardian writers’ season prediction: 11th (NB: this is not necessarily Matt Cleary’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 9th

The annual riddle of why Gold Coast Titans – roster like a fringe Origin squad, coach regarded as the game’s Nicest Man, and a modern, purpose-built stadium in the fastest-growing league land in the world – continue to disappoint is confounding scholars.

Looking at them, they should be hot like African bird’s eye chilli. Monster pack, slick backs, clever schemers, tough trainers (Trevor Gillmeister eats the weak) and an experienced, respected coach. Playing them, however, can be an exercise in humiliation or humility. One week they’re the Raiders of 1990, the next Sydney University from 1936, losers of 42 straight.

Why is it so? Who can say? Neither coach, players, fans, trainers, administrators, press, sociologists, soothsayers, back-bar drunks nor the ghost of Nostradamus can adequately explain why this quality squadron remain the competition’s enigma. Like beaten favourites at Flemington, it would help if they could talk.

This year? Should be no different. Why would it be? Same players. Same coach. Same stadium. Same-same. They’ll miss Jamal Idris, profit from Neil Henry. And while each defeat (there were 13) and win (11) will have been dissected like the entrails of a Peruvian spider monkey, they’ll still be no closer to knowing whether they’ll make the eight.

But where there’s life there’s hope, as bookmakers would tell you. And there’s plenty of life in 22-year-old man-thing Ryan James, a 120kg monster from Tweed Heads who in the back bit of 2013 plundered yards like a Viking fresh off the boat. Watch him.

Elsewhere in the pack Luke Bailey, 34, and Mark Minichiello, 32, are still bopping about (old blokes love the interchange), while Greg Bird, Nate Myles and Ash Harrison form an all-Origin back-row. Throw in sasquatch-looking beasts Dave Taylor and Luke Douglas, and you have a forward pack with more weight than the United Nations Security Council.

The backs? Run like Jesus lizards scampering across the salt-pan. Wingers David Mead and Kevin Gordon are among the quickest fiends in the comp. Halves Aiden Sezar and Albert Kelly have a complementary combination of solidity and flashiness, respectively. Sezar will bunt kicks for the leapers; Kelly will do some wondrous, hot-footed things. Will Zillman can punish from the back.

So, they’re good. Why they are also bad is the quandary of our time. And it’s one that coach John “Hoss” Cartwright is going to have to sort out this season, despite his tenure in the role being legally – if not bindingly – contracted until 2016. They love ol’ Hoss on the Goldie. But they like winning more. This is it.

Manly Sea Eagles

Guardian writers’ season prediction: 3rd (NB: this is not necessarily Paul Connolly’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 4th (lost in grand final)

A by-product of the salary cap is that it creates brief windows in which teams must make hay before they sit again among the stubble looking to the skies. Manly, however, seem to have jammed their window open. They have been semi-finalists the past nine years in succession and nothing about them suggests that sequence is about to be broken in 2014.

The Geoff Toovey-led Sea Eagles go into the new season with a first-team line-up barely changed from the one that took them to last year’s decider. They are, it must be said, an ageing group, most of them closer to the end than the start of their careers (so perhaps Manly’s window sash is starting to fray). But Toovey, like Melbourne’s Craig Bellamy, has a way of getting his team to maintain the rage, even after the kind of success that would have others putting their feet up, content to reminisce rather than put in any more backbreaking work.

As per recent seasons, Manly’s challenge will be structured around the 2011 premiership-winning spine of fullback Brett Stewart, halves Daly Cherry-Evans and Kieran Foran, and “underrated” hooker Matt Ballin (who would continue to be called underrated even if he brokered peace between Israel and Palestine — for some players that’s just their lot).

In Cherry-Evans and Foran Manly have, arguably, the best halves pairing in the competition. Between their contrasting games — Foran’s hammer and Cherry-Evans’ slide rule — they complement each other perfectly, and their form will go a long way to determining the success of Manly’s season.

Elsewhere Manly bristle with players who have been there and done that – as well as a few youngsters who look highly capable. In the backs Manly feature wingers Jorge Tafua and David Williams, while their centres are the evergreen Steve Matai and Jamie Lyon (whose self-imposed representative footy ban has paid dividends for Manly). Up front there are more familiar faces in Glenn Stewart, Anthony Watmough, Brenton Lawrence and Jason King, the latter returning from a long injury lay-off.

King’s improved health is timely given Manly will have to do without stalwart Brent Kite (who came to the club in 2005, the year Manly started their run of nine straight semifinal series), Joe Galuvao and cult figure George Rose. Manly have lost some significant experience and metres here, and how well they cover for them will be decisive.

Barring significant injuries, Manly’s season may simply come down to hunger. If the irrepressible Toovey can continue to impose his personality on his team Manly will be there or, more likely, thereabouts. Manly fans must hope Toovey hasn’t spent the off-season doing yoga and mindfulness exercises.